


The End of Autumn

by endofthyme



Category: An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson
Genre: F/M, Futurefic, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22809400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofthyme/pseuds/endofthyme
Summary: A visitor has come to the autumn court.
Relationships: Isobel/Rook (An Enchantment of Ravens), Rook (An Enchantment of Ravens) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	The End of Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> I read this lovely YA fantasy novel a while ago and, afterwards, it had me thinking deep thoughts about... cycles, and inevitability. So I wrote this. I hope you enjoy!

Nothing lasts forever.

Isobel lived perhaps somewhat longer than a normal human lifetime, though she never mentioned it to Rook, in that way she had of politely sparing his feelings when he _knew_ he was doing something foolish out of selfish pride. But he let her go in the end. Of course he did. It was her will to remain mortal, so mortal she would remain, no matter how much it grieved him, or for how long.

It had been so long.

As the decades had stretched on, and the years began to show on her face, he'd used the glamour less and less. By the end, his true face was the only one he showed the world, and the autumn court had tentatively followed suit, at least within the realms of the fair folk. So, as a tall, birch-white, and stretched-thin figure wearing wooden armor made her way into his court alone, she saw only inhuman faces watching her. But that was what she was used to, as one born to winter. She ascended a set of curving marble stairs to an expansive throne room wrought of twisting trees, paying no heed to the drifts of brightly-colored fallen leaves that shriveled up and faded to a dark brown as they touched her feet and ankles.

Some time after their marriage, when Rook had managed to get himself into a bit of a scrape, Isobel had insisted he extend her raven enchantment to himself as well. In all the years since, even after numerous assassination attempts and fights with all manner of beasts, no more than six had ever visited him at once. Twelve ravens now roosted in the boughs above the autumn king's throne. They cawed uncertainly.

The visitor stopped a respectful distance away, but did not kneel. She waited, unmoving. Minutes passed. Or maybe hours did. It was so hard to tell, sometimes.

Fingers twitched against oaken armrests, but the autumn king's eyes stared through his guest, unseeing.

"Your majesty," she said at last, her tone courtly, but with a hint of chiding.

He did not blink, but his attention drifted to her, from wherever it had been. "Hemlock?" he asked, his voice cracking from disuse.

"No, your majesty," she corrected him, gently, "Hemlock was my… aunt."

His focus sharpened a little more, and his amethyst eyes flicked up and down beneath a furrowed brow. "…Cypress," he finally said.

She inclined her head. "Just so." She shifted her stance to stand at her full height, looming over every other being in attendance. "I have come to challenge you, Raven King," she declared.

Rook was seated in his wooden throne with leaves resting in his hair and in his lap and in piles around his feet. Thorny brambles had spent years inching up the sides to grasp his arms, unnoticed. But they'd stayed respectfully away from the second, empty throne that sat beside him. Cypress saw all of this, and understood.

Years ago, centuries ago, one year after Cypress had slain the former winter prince and ascended the throne in his place, Isobel had painted a portrait of the new monarch. In it, she had given her a sympathetic look, a look full of human fellow-feeling. It was that very look that Cypress wore now on her rime-gilded face as she took in the sight of Rook, almost as if she'd spent these centuries treating that painting like a mirror to be mimicked in every detail.

But if a being looks as though they hold an emotion in their heart and all their actions support that conclusion, who's to say they do not? What is the difference between a natural emotion and a manufactured one, when both are ultimately identical in their effects? 

Compassionate eyes met ones filled with a bleak sadness, deep as a well in the woods.

"You ruled us wisely and well for as long as you could, your majesty, but your kingdom has been falling to decay around you for decades. Your autumn leaves hide festering rot beneath, endangering all your subjects, human and fair folk alike." At this, the side of Rook's mouth twisted downwards, and his eyes narrowed, but he did not protest. Cypress pressed on. "It is past time for another turning of the season. I know you can feel it, too."

A sudden wind picked up, sending a whirlwind of leaves flying around the throne room. "And you're the one to rule in my place?" the Raven King asked coolly, a spark of anger shining through the long-unchallenged despair. "One beholden to winter, with no use for humankind?"

She did not flinch as the leaves struck her. They withered, though, on contact, draining color from the cyclone on her leeward side. "Our kind's use of humanity has rarely been benevolent, as you well know," Cypress responded, her cold, clear voice cutting through the roar. The wind slowed briefly, then stubbornly renewed itself. "But rest assured I do not plan to subject Whimsy to untold generations of winter. It is time we ended our stranglehold on the people of that long-frozen town. I will release them back to the World Beyond, and we fair folk will withdraw from the human realm completely and stop meddling in their affairs."

"You think you can hold back the spring court from their trifles?"

"I do," Cypress said, without a hint of arrogance. "I have the strength." She raised her hand, and the wind fell still, leaves halting in midair. "Show us whether you do, too."

Rook made a sharp movement, as if to stand, but he was held back by the thorned vines wrapped around his arms. He looked down at them, and they began to uncoil, but the sight of them seemed to shake him to the core. He yanked himself free sooner than he ought to have, scoring lines on the backs of his hands, and stood, drawing his sword.

Metal cleaved into wood as Cypress raised her arm to block her king's wild swing. As one, the suspended leaves dropped, spinning, to the ground.

Rook yanked his sword free and tried again, aiming for her side, but this time Cypress parried with a shield wrought of ice, which quickly enveloped his weapon and began climbing up it towards his hand. Snarling, he released it, and she flung her arm to the side, casting off the block of ice and the sword encased within it. Rook attempted to dodge a thrust from her other arm, which had become a frozen lance, but it grazed his side. Coldness seeped into him, spreading from the wound, but his blood had spilled, and that could be taken advantage of.

Tangled briars burst through the floor, constricting around Cypress's legs. They became brittle as they touched her, but they cut into her skin and restricted her movements nevertheless. Rook flicked his fingers and saplings spiked out of the ground in a circle around her, aimed to skewer. She lashed out at them, severing most of them and halting their growth with her ice, but one got through, stabbing into her side and cutting a deeper gash than she'd inflicted. She grinned rows of sharp teeth as she yanked it free with her unfrozen hand. As crystal-clear blood dripped to the ground, a layer of ice began to spread across the throne room's stone floor. Rook took a step back as it approached him, but it didn't climb his legs, merely moved on until the whole room was coated. Icicles dangled from the trees that made up the walls, and leaves that had been long stuck in an eternal autumn were dying on their branches. Ravens scattered.

Cypress took a step forward, shattering the iced-over brambles. Freed, she leapt towards Rook, who leapt aside readily, but skidded across the now-frozen floor, unable to get a foothold. He raised his hand, and the ground rumbled, but nothing broke through the ice. He dodged another strike, then another, then found himself cornered, with Cypress closing in at speed. He bared his teeth, wind whipped a flurry of dead leaves free of their skeletal branches, and a hulking beast of a black bear, its fur tinged auburn where the light struck it, reared up to greet her attack.

Hurled back by the blow, Cypress dragged her lance against the ground to stabilize her landing, sliding to a halt on one knee. Rook charged, claws gouging into the ice as he ran. Cypress, unnaturally fast, ducked past his claws and raised her arm. Ice pierced flesh.

A heavy body thudded to the ground. 

Cypress curved upright. The ice encasing her arm cracked and fell off of her in pieces. A cold wind blew past. She turned to face her fallen king, now returned to his usual form. Blood seeped from his chest as he lay on his back, breathing slowly, staring at the sky through frozen branches, festooned in ravens.

"You've won," he said.

"Such is the way of things," she replied.

"Help me up," he said. "Take me outside."

"Of course, your majesty," she replied.

Two figures limped out of the Raven King's court, on the last day of an unremitting autumn. They picked their way along a well-tended path into the surrounding woods, until they reached a small clearing.

Isobel had feared nothing in the world like she had feared losing her humanity. One facet of that fear had been the possibility of becoming something like a thane, centuries after her death. When she and Rook had spoken of… eventualities, he'd agreed to have her cremated, which was the only real defense against the possibility. Enchantments might hold for millenia, but ash is ash. She'd wondered aloud, then, about whether fair folk had any funeral rites, or left any wills. They did die, sometimes, after all. Rook had shaken his head, staring at the floor pensively. When he did die, though, he had said, slowly, he hoped he would end up near her.

Cypress set Rook down behind a simple headstone, which marked the place Queen Isobel's ashes were buried. "Thank you, Cypress," he whispered, his breath coming out in labored pants. He closed his eyes. "I wish you luck. May you never… find yourself becoming… your own worst nightmare."

Cypress gazed upwards at the clouds rolling ponderously in. "I'm afraid that might just be how it always ends, for us. But I'll stand my ground as best I can," she said, musingly, "until it's time for spring."

She didn't get an answer.

The new queen of the fair folk turned to follow the path back out of the glade, as a light dusting of snow began to fall, at least for the moment, on the autumnlands. Behind her, a crooked willow tree stood, sheltering a grave beneath its boughs.


End file.
